


Home

by pheyne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-11
Updated: 2011-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pheyne/pseuds/pheyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Secrets rarely remained secrets forever and Eames knew that soon he would have to choose: home or Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by Jude. Also posted on LiveJournal.

Criminals lived nomadic existences on the whole. Eames had been one long enough to have done a fairly cross-cultural survey on the topic and had found it to be a universal truth. However, those who managed careers in dreamscape work lived more scattered existences than most.  


Case in point: they had just finished yet another aeroplane job, this time en route to Atlanta, but not one of them would be staying there.  


Eames looked up and across the aisle at where Ariadne slept, head propped against Cobb’s broad shoulder. She would head back to Paris in all likelihood, where her flat was and where her friends still mostly lived. In another year, she would be done with university and at loose ends. She had been talking to him about perhaps moving back to her parents’ home in Chicago. She still considered it her home, not yet ready to recognize it as simply the first of many transitory places.  


Beside her, Cobb stared out the window. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, then Cobb’s soul was a million miles away, likely back in Seattle with his children in the home that he and Mal had once designed. Eames had known Mal, not as well as Arthur and certainly nowhere near as well as Cobb but well enough that he remembered her breathy laugh, loose-limbed walk, and eternal French practicality. He couldn’t imagine living in a place that would be perpetually haunted by her ghost. Yet, he knew Cobb considered that to be his only home despite the fact that the man owned several other properties.  


Cobb purchased properties out of dire necessity: the flat in Rio, the walk-up in Zurich, even the rat-infested brick mud hut in Johannesburg that Eames had been unfortunately invited to on one occasion. They were all places Cobb had been stuck in while on the run; unable to get out of the city and unable to get work in the city, he’d purchased them as places where he could run to ground, lick his wounds, and regroup. Why he kept them was anyone’s guess. Eames doubted any of them held pleasant memories for the man.  


Across from them, Yusuf lounged restlessly, earplugs firmly in place and dusty loafers beating out a tune against the seat back of the unfortunate young woman in front of him. Something Bollywood-ish played on his in-flight entertainment screen but Eames knew his mind was back in Mombasa. Yusuf lived where he worked, and he generally itched to get back to it the moment he locked the front door. In the end, Eames couldn’t help but be drawn to such constancy; few people he knew kept their lives quite that simple. Of course, Yusuf had also been swayed by Cobb’s offer of additional money to complete inception at the risk of burying their collective arses in limbo for an undefined period of time. Apparently, leading a simple life did not always equate with leading life cheaply.  


Finally, there was Arthur. Eames had always found Arthur to be the most complicated of the lot, even before they started this . . . whatever this was that had Eames trailing after the man as if he were Eames’ personal polar north. Arthur owned a great deal of property. Even if Eames hadn’t realized it before, he certainly knew it now that he had carte blanche to stay at any of a dozen of them. Arthur owned property in places like Singapore, Cartagena, and Warsaw, places where he might conceivably be driven into work-related hiding and where he would like to see through the siege in relative comfort and privacy. Arthur also owned property in places like Santorini, Prague, and London, places where he went when he was feeling sun-starved, Old World, or cosmopolitan and wanted to indulge the mood by moving into a suitable flat the same way he would don an appropriate suit.  


And then there was the flat in Barcelona. Arthur loved Barcelona, would drag Eames through touristy streets that made Eames’ eyes water with temptation as he explained the intricacies of Gaudi’s bizarre architecture. On the rare rainy afternoon, they would wander the halls of Museu Picasso de Barcelona, and Arthur would pretend he was a student again with nothing but art and architecture on his mind. Arthur loved Barcelona and he loved the flat in Barcelona, but Eames doubted Arthur called either home. He’d pressed the issue once and, in a post-coital haze, Arthur had admitted that he likely considered the cabin in the woods that they’d purchased together a few years ago as close to a home as he’d had since childhood. While Eames took that as the highest compliment, he also felt somewhat depressed at the thought. He knew Arthur had sold the cabin last year after a termite scare had threatened property prices in the area.  


Eames had lived in many places over the years but he owned only one home.  


Eames remembered his early years in Wiltshire through a hazy golden glow, as if it had all been a fairytale that happened to someone else. He remembered his years in London with a great deal more grit and detail and, if pushed, would have to admit to some lingering fondness for the city; no one could experience that much pain and personal suffering (not to mention jail time) in a place and not feel a piece of his soul leap in recognition every time he went there. Since then, however, he’d lived in many places, Mombasa being the most recent. He’d enjoyed each of them for different reasons . . . from the earthiness of Mombasa to the sheer energy of New York. But he had only ever owned one home.  


The house in Siena sat only two streets away from the Piazza del Campo and, if Eames were home during the Il Palio race days in July and August, he would bolt all the shutters closed and hibernate in the cool dark with whatever alcohol he had on hand and fresh prosciutto and bread he had delivered daily from the market around the corner. The tiled roof was original to the house and had survived world wars with barely a shiver. The balconies were all lined with intricate wrought iron that Eames repainted himself every year. He loved the terracotta colour of the walls inside and the way the rooms all felt cool and hushed regardless of what might have been going on in the narrow street outside. After he’d been home a week or so, those rooms would all smell of cinnamon and almonds in silent testimony to Eames’ addiction to north African food.  


The first thing Eames had done after purchasing the place was to stock its wine cellar. Eames was indifferent to wine but in love with the idea of sitting on his topmost balcony as the sun set and the city turned to burnt orange before his eyes. The centre courtyard held a single tree and countless flowerbeds that Eames allowed to grow in complete disarray simply because he was still English enough to feel sinfully rebellious in the act. Over the years, he had filled the rooms with his art, not forgeries but simple original paintings he worked on during his spare time and might have made his vocation if life had gone differently. His furniture were all over-sized pieces of hand-carved wood lined with cushions soaked in the colours of the sky.  


No one else had ever watched the sun set from Eames’ balcony. No one else had ever been invited into his home. But secrets rarely remained secrets forever and Eames knew that someday soon he was going to have to choose: the cool terracotta calm of home or the gut-churning thrill of trotting the globe with Arthur.  


As if he could sense the unhappy turn of Eames’ thoughts, Arthur shifted then woke, lifting his head from where he had pillowed it against the airplane window. Eames bit back a grin. Only Arthur could manage an eight hour flight in Armani and exit crease-perfect with hair in place. Then the handsome face frowned and he leaned across the aisle towards Eames, blatantly disregarding their usual post-job no-acknowledgement-of-one’s-teammates policy.  


“You okay?”  


“Must have been the aeroplane food.”  


Arthur’s frown deepened. None of them had eaten a bite, having been too busy at the time committing corporate espionage on an unsuspecting CEO’s dreamscape in first class.  


“Are you heading off on business after this?” Eames asked then because Arthur was nothing if he was not a workaholic.  


Arthur shrugged. “Not really. But there’s this thing in Santorini. Interested?”  


They both smiled then, silently remembering a time when Eames had been the one asking a not-so-different question with not-so-different intentions.  


“I thought Martinelli . . . .”  


Arthur cut him off before he could manage to blurt out any more details. There shouldn’t have been anyone close enough to overhear outside of their own teammates but it was impossible to ever be certain. Up ahead, Cobb turned to scowl at them: no more idle chit chat allowed. Uncharacteristically, Arthur ignored the warning.  


“You looked like you needed a break,” he said, sharp eyes softening as they ran over the lines of Eames’ face.  
Eames had come to terms with the fact that he loved Arthur, would risk everything for Arthur, and might very well finish up dying a painful and bloody death with Arthur as a result. But in that moment, he realized something more: if they were very, very lucky, he might just manage to grow old with Arthur. Eames fingered the outline of the key in his trouser pocket and came to a decision.  


“Actually, I’ve been thinking of making a trip home. Care to join me?”

Eames had lived in many places over the years but he owned only one home.


End file.
